Cinco de Mayo 2 — Easy Chicken Chilaquiles

I recognize that it’s a little on the late side for many of you to cook this for Cinco de Mayo. I have heard rumors, however, that in some parts of Texas, Cinco de Mayo has been rescheduled for September due to concerns over swine flu. They’re also planning to push back the 4th of July to November.

Regardless of when you celebrate Cinco de Mayo, or whether you celebrate Cinco de Mayo, this dish is worthy to add to your repertoire. I got the recipe from my mother, who is a source to be reckoned with. She works full time, has written several books, travels the world on a regular basis (I think right now she’s somewhere in the Aegean) and still manages to cook dinner nearly every night (skipping the nights on the Aegean). So you knw that any recipe that comes from a woman like this is 1) simple to prepare, because she does not have TIME for excessively complicated dishes and 2) delicious, because she has high standards.

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please see Savour-Fare.com

Tea and Cookies — Earl Grey Cheesecake

It’s the end of the month which means it’s time for the Daring Bakers’ Challenge. If you don’t know about this group of intrepid, take-no-prisoners bakers, you can find out more at their brand new website, The Daring Kitchen.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Now cheesecake and I don’t have the best history. You see, my father makes terrific cheesecake — huge, New York style cheesecake with a creamy filling and sour cream topping. He makes them every year at Christmas time for his students, and his fame as a cheesecake baker is widely acclaimed. I wouldn’t dare make traditional cheesecake for fear of being accused of trying to steal his thunder or worse, having my cheesecake come up terribly, terribly short. The one time I did try to make a cheesecake — pumpkin cheesecake, for Thanksgiving, it was roundly dismissed in favor of pumpkin pie.

So you see, I needed a little daring.

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-Fare.com

Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Gratin

I suspect that the time for writing posts about butternut squash and eating things made with butternut squash is quickly drawing to a close. You all want asparagus and rhubarb and meyer lemons and things that taste like spring and warm weather. I understand this impetus, I really do, but I could not sleep at night thinking that you all would have to live another six to nine months without this recipe in your lives. It is just that delicious. It is more than the sum of its parts. It is what food is supposed to taste like. What this means, of course, is that you should make this right now. Well, you can finish reading this post, if you REALLY need to, but then run to the oven. Chop chop!

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-Fare.com.

Grilled Pimento Cheese Sandwiches

My grandmother belongs to that certain generation that came of cooking age in the 1950’s and embraced the introduction of convenience foods with fervor.   This means that Cool Whip is in her freezer, Jello is in her salads, and every dinner party starts with crackers and spreadable cheese — a lurid orange concoction with unpronounceable ingredients that conveniently comes in a tub, or, for more elegant occasions, a ball rolled in pecans.  (To be fair, my grandmother is otherwise a very good cook, and it is entirely possible that my grandchildren will find my ca. 2009 obsession with sriracha and pico de gallo to be equally quaint.)

When I was asked one time to bring hors d’oeuvres to a family party (all parties in our family are potlucks) I cast about for something new besides the regular old brie and crackers, and remembered a program I had seen on the Food Network.  On this program, someone had been exploring the food traditions of this exotic land they called the American South, and had set forth at length about a cornerstone of this food tradition — pimento cheese.  Bingo!  I thought, homemade spreadable cheese.  I figured my grandmother, at least would appreciate it.

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-Fare.com

Savoury Sweets — Sweet Potato and Mushroom Lasagna

My early encounters with sweet potatoes were of the Thanksgiving variety – candied from a can and topped with marshmallows and tooth-achingly sweet. I was not a big fan. I wanted dessert for dessert, and not for dinner, and if I was going to have dessert, I wanted it to be something good, like chocolate, or at least pumpkin pie.

It wasn’t until I was all grown up and had my own kitchen that I discovered the myriad and delicious uses to which sweet potatoes could be put. (And when I say sweet potatoes, to be clear, I mean thin reddish skin, orange flesh. Sometimes called yams. To be distinguished from the white fleshed sweet potatoes you find in Japan and the Caribbean, and “true yams”). Baked with a little butter and salt, mashed with garlic, or cut into French fries, sweet potatoes offered that lovely caramel sweetness that stands up so well to savoury applications. (I’m still no fan of the sweet with sweet. Unless you are talking about sweet potato pie, which is properly served as a dessert, or the sweet potato cake served up by my husband’s Southern grandmother. My contribution to Thanksgiving is a spicy sweet potato gratin. My grandmother has a conniption about the departure from tradition and then eats it with gusto.)

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-Fare.com.